


Somewhere Safe (to Sea)

by Synergic



Category: Hadestown - Mitchell
Genre: Multi, Post-Canon, Post-Coital, Pre-Relationship, Threesome - F/F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-15
Updated: 2020-02-15
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22594459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Synergic/pseuds/Synergic
Summary: The gods in another garden.
Relationships: Persephone/Eurydice/Hades (Hadestown)
Comments: 3
Kudos: 18
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Somewhere Safe (to Sea)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [janetcarter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/janetcarter/gifts).



“Do you hate him?” Persephone asks, curled in a nest of dead grass with her fingers still wound in the girl’s hair though in all other ways they are no longer close enough to touch, sweat gone cool on her breasts and belly.

She means her husband, Eurydice knows. The man whose body has left a shadow impression of broken stalks behind her. He’s still a third person in this makeshift bed— a warm, pleasant ache deep inside her —for all that he’s left them alone for the moment.

She means: _why are you doing this?_

It’s a hell of a question to ask right now.

There is a garden in Hadestown, it turns out, for all that it isn’t a happy one. It tops a penthouse apartment— not the largest or most modern, though it clearly was once, back when this would-be oasis was first cultivated. Now there are other buildings that seem like they could brush the very dome of the underworld, sharp like cuts of obsidian and looking to pierce the great inverted belly of mother earth herself. 

But the plants are still a testament to wealth. Nothing else could insist that life can and will take root here and be obeyed. Nothing but love, at least, and that seems lacking. Everything’s too hard-pruned: carefully-chosen varietals, pomegranate trees with leathery bark that seem more sculptural than plant-like. Poppies that are always more ugly bud and thistly leaves than blood-red bloom. A strange assortment. 

They can’t seem to keep the grass alive, though, long winter stuff though it is. The deadness of it prickles between Eurydice’s shoulder blades.

“I don’t— No,” she says at last, while the tickle grows to an itch she’d like to dig at with her finger nails.

Persephone exhales, and her whole face seems the softer for it, something of the goddess-statue chipping away to be replaced by the woman again. Eurydice thinks that look might be at least half for her, for the tacit acknowledgement that she’s sharing her body out of want, not because it’s the only weapon she has left to avenge herself with. But the other half is for Hades— who, in spite of herself, Persephone does not want hated by anyone. 

Even those who could claim the right. 

Especially those who have the right, given Persephone herself is one of them. 

This isn’t where Persephone and Hades live now. It’s a failed attempt at home-making, a love gift gone awry. How many times _have_ the gods tried to patch things up? How many expensive presents and grand gestures, or offers of a drink and a dance, just like old times?

Eurydice has been drunk now too. She’s danced with one, the other, both together: a gift from one god to another. 

“It was a long, long, time ago,” she says. It’s to keep Persephone’s smile on her, like pulling the sun back away from the horizon with nothing but the light in your eyes to call it home. That’s a selfish reason to forgive a man, but at least it makes her honest when she says— “I understand him better now.”

Persephone nods, as if this kind of secret and intimate worship satisfies her most of all. Her hands move in tandem, cupping Eurydice’s face. 

“So,” she says, priest-solemn. “So. If that’s the way it’s going to be . . . will you do just one thing? For me? Watch out for him when I’m away?”

Eurydice doesn’t want to be another failed attempt. But there’s a kernel of something she doesn’t want to name yet, buried deep in the meat of her heart. And Persephone is the goddess who makes things bloom.

“All right,” she says, at last. “I’ll try.”

Persephone smiles again, starlit, and lifts one hand beyond Eurydice’s shoulder to welcome Hades back to bed.

**Author's Note:**

> The descriptions of a Hadestown-style rooftop retreat were very much inspired by Swinburne's beautifully eerie (if somewhat bleak) _The Garden of Proserpine_. Also the title!


End file.
